


Pub Series, The -- Story 2 Illusions

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon - Engaging gap-filler, Canon - Enhances original, Canon - Fills plot hole(s), Characters - Well-handled emotions, General, Plot - Bittersweet, Plot - Can't stop reading, Plot - Surprising reversals, Plot - Tear-jerker, Post-War of the Ring, Subjects - Animals, Writing - Well-handled PoV(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3768560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Complete! Was called Past Thoughts. Meriadoc story. There, I've gone and spoiled it. But I thought if I didn't put his name here and left a generic summary, folks would pass it by... Worth a re-read if you read the first version, I added a good bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pub Series, The -- Story 2 Illusions

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

Have you had the experience of seeing something out of the corner of your  
eye bring back a full blown memory? I once had a pony. I loved that pony.  
We spent hours and hours together. Her name was Keeda. It was a  
mispronunciation of a heroic bug that could do anything from a story book  
my Aunt gave me. My father used to read it to me every night. I couldn’t  
say Katydid. That was the bug’s name. Katydid. And she did. She could  
do anything. That was the point of the story. I see now it was to instill  
in me an understanding that if a little bug could do what was set before  
her then a small hobbit lad could certainly do no worse. I had many  
lessons to learn being the only child and heir. Because I couldn’t say  
Katydid I called the bug Keeda.

“Da, read me Keeda, peeeeese?” and he would. Nearly everynight for years.  
Until I got my own Keeda. And she was wonderful. Not many hobbits have  
ponies. And Keeda wasn’t really mine. She belonged to my father and she  
was a work pony. But when he brought her home from the horse and pony  
auction in Bree that late autumn day, I thought she was for me. I jumped  
and clapped and ran to my father and hugged him soooooo hard as he led this  
most beauteous creature on a hackamore down our lane at the end of the day.

“Thank-you, DA, oh oh oh, thank-you!!!!”. I just KNEW he’d bought her for  
me because I had mastered the onerous chore of sitting at the table the  
entire dinner, using the proper table service, NOT talking out of turn, AND  
keeping my napkin in my lap (these were important lessons according to my  
mother, the Mistress of the smial. I still have difficulty with them).  
Looking back, remembering in later years how my mother and father laughed  
and laughed about that day – “Oh, Saradoc how can you NOT give him the  
pony? He thinks it’s for him, silly lad!” I realize now that the pony was  
NOT for me, but my parents loved me and tolerated more than I gave them  
credit for. Especially during my rebelious tweens.

In my younger years when my mother would recount this particular trifling,  
she’d pull me in and kiss me. In my tweens when I’d have nothing to do  
with my mother’s administrations, she’d content herself with smiling at me  
while I blushed furiously. Now that I’m of age and have seen the  
atrocities of war, I let her hug and kiss me when she tells the story.

Keeda and I had wonderful times together. I got her out of more days of  
ploughing than I can recall. And she kept me company through the agonizing  
years called pre-tweens. “Oh Da, look, Keeda’s foot hurts, you can’t  
POSSIBLY make her go out in the field today…” eyes pleading up at the  
Master, begging for what I was worth just so I could jump on her back and  
ride her full tilt out to the edge of the forest to look for adventure.  
And he’d give in, always with a semblance of authority, “Well, lad, I  
*suppose* she’s a bit lame in the foreleg. Now, you give her a rub down  
and make sure she doesn’t use it today. We’ll work that acre tomorrow”.  
And my father would smile indulging me. Somehow, I never managed to  
completely destroy his confidence in me, though there were times when he’d  
warm my backside with his strap, even into my twenties…. And Keeda would be  
there when I’d go cry in her mane about the cruelty of the world. Little  
did I know of cruelty. But she was sweet and smelled like hay and always  
nickered when I’d come near. A beauteous creature. A true friend. There  
until she died. Too soon for me, but not too soon for her. She was weary  
and old; it was her time to leave me. Her time to leave me to the comfort  
of other good friends.

She was black. All black except for a star and two socks, one on the front  
and one on the rear. I saw a black pony this morning on my way into town.  
My heart skipped a beat. Memories forgotten flooded me. I wanted to run  
up and catch her mane in my hands. I stopped myself before I yelled out  
her name. It wasn’t my Keeda. This imposter indeed had one white sock on  
her hind. But as her owner led her around the corner I noticed she had no  
sock on the front and had a foal by her side.

We never bred Keeda. Breeding an animal as large as a pony was best left  
up to professionals. Old Toby had nearly been killed when he’d tried to  
breed his beautiful bay to a neighbor’s cousin’s stud pony. You don’t  
mess around with animals bigger than you. And he’d lost the mare in the  
end. She’d bucked and kicked and broken his knee as he’d tried to hold her  
still. She’d gotten tangled up in the cross ties when one broke free.  
The lad who helped him in the fields was assisting by holding the stud. He  
grabbed the broken lead and wrapped it together with the stud’s lead around  
the upright. They both tried to bolt and she fell, broken leg…. Had to  
put her down. Everyone was so sad. To loose a piece of property as  
expensive as a pony and one as beautiful as that bay….. and then to break  
one’s own knee in the event, too much trouble and sadness. Pippin was 22.  
He lived fairly close to Tobias, being from Tookboro. I remember he kept  
asking me why the stud bit the mare so meanly and why she fought back and  
why she had to be killed. I didn’t cry but I remember Pip crying when I  
tried to explain. Later he perked up and became his old cheerful, crazy  
self, hideous incident forgotten, until a year later he would excitedly  
retell the tale at the pub because he had seen it first hand and loved to  
tell tales where he was “involved”.

This coming from a lad who thought a fellow Knight of Rohan said “shot”  
when he’d said “shod” that day before the battle when referring to his  
gelding not having the proper shoes to do him justice in battle and how the  
gelding would have to be “shod”. I still remember Pippin crying at the  
thought of a creature being intentionally killed. I was transported back  
to the day the Bay had to be put down. He cried then in the Shire and he  
was crying hysterically on my neck out on the field 7 years later. I  
thought I’d nearly laugh myself to death once I’d figured it out as a  
simple mistake in hearing. But I didn’t; it dawned on me that it wasn’t  
his love of equines that caused him to break down out there in front of  
everyone but the effects of living in the depths of despair for nearly a  
year. Now facing the horrors of a war that would probably take our lives.  
Still, he was mighty chagrined once I explained that SHOD was not SHOT and  
there was no reason to kill that wonderful horse our friend had chosen to  
take him into that fateful battle. Ah, Pippin can still be dense. But  
he’s such a comfort, having seen what I’ve seen and having recovered far  
better than I. Pip knows and understands why it’s important to be a friend  
and can make me laugh when I forget the beauty of the world.

But I digress. Have you ever had that experience of seeing someone long  
dead walk into the pub, have your heart skip a beat, your blood rush to  
your face and your hopes soar, only to realize that the person is just  
someone who looks like your old friend? And then you see that he doesn’t  
even really LOOK like your best friend, the lad you remember from the day  
your consciousness formed. It was just a trick of the light and the fact  
that the stranger has dark curls and intense blue eyes and is really too  
thin to be a proper hobbit.

I miss Keeda. She was a good pony.

I miss my cousin. He was my best friend. He gave himself so that I can  
sit here in this pub and drink this ale and think about good times past and  
hope for good times to come.


End file.
